


Safety

by Iamprongsie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, Random burbling about the otp at 2am
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 19:18:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17628119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamprongsie/pseuds/Iamprongsie





	Safety

Safe. These days it’s a foreign concept to Cody, who lives for the alarms and the call to battle. Each day is spent locked in battle, slamming charge pack after charge pack into his rifle, protecting his General. Safety is for those who don’t have over 3000 souls on their shoulders, and almost that number on their heart. 

 

(When Rex saw the scars, he stopped and stared. Written into Cody’s skin was a tally for almost every soldier dead under his command, on his chest and arms and thighs and stomach and even his back. 

After a screaming argument and subsequent make up, Rex would rub salve into the fresh marks and kiss the old scars, moving up to Cody’s lips as he was pressed up against the bulkhead by Rex’s more significant bulk. This was when Cody could drop CC-2224, Marshal Commander of the 7th Sky Corps and the Third Systems Army. Here, with Rex, he was just another clone. He was just _Cody_ , a man with his love, just another ordinary face.)

 

Safety means nothing to him now, not when sabers sing and blasters fire, not when thousands of vod’e die every day, with more created to fill the ever-largening holes. Battles bleed into battles, and he can’t remember where he’s fought and where they’ve won and when the Republic has had to make a ‘tactical retreat’. He can’t count the number of brothers that have fallen in battle, can’t mark anymore on his skin. There’s so many, and he is responsible for them. He fails them every day that they fight, fails them at night when _good soldiers follow orders_ sounds in his head and he wakes screaming, to an empty bunk and no sign of the 501st. 

 

Safety is not the battlefield, where one wrong move means death for you and your men. Safety isn’t even the training room, where every stray noise makes him flinch and reach for a blaster that isn’t there. Safety is not the barracks, where his men wake screaming from nightmares or refuse to sleep, holding each other when the shadows in their heads make an appearance. Safety is not the deck, where the clones are still under the ‘watchful eyes’ of the natborn officers. 

 

(Those nights with Rex are what he lives for, the warmth of his riduur’s arms and presence. Cody is not a philosophical man, nor is he prone to flights of fancy like some of his men, but he truly believes that Rex is what keeps him going. The forced separations make their hearts grow fonder, and it’s almost too good to be true when the General informs him of a joint mission with the 501st. 

Their armour crashes into each other in a quiet corridor, helmets ripped off, hands wandering. They’re panting into each other’s mouths as they make use of what little time they have before they’re wanted on the bridge, before time pulls them away from each other again. They stand on the bridge together, the perfect picture of impassive clone soldiers, hands behind their backs on parade rest. A flash of orange catches Cody’s eye, and he looks to the side to see his handguards on Rex’s hands. Rex’s own guards are on Cody’s hands, and the similar shape molds to his hands. There’s less denting and scarring on Rex’s, probably because he hasn’t passed his habit of punching droids onto his riduur. Rex looks over at him as the Generals bicker in the background and smiles, catching Cody staring at the orange and blue.)

 

Safety is Rex. Safety is being held in his arms, when the galaxy is falling apart and Cody sends more and more men to their deaths. Safety is the long nights when neither of them can sleep, tangled in their blankets on the too-small bunk, dreaming of a future where the war stops tomorrow and no one else dies. Safety is the comfort offered after nightmares, _good soldiers follow orders_ changing into _ni kar’taylir darasuum gar, cyare, ni kar’taylir darasuum gar_. Safety is their bodies pressed together, moving in perfect harmony, when all that matters is Rex and how good this feels, how _right_. 

 

Safety is the inexplicable feeling he gets on the battlefield, when he sees a flash of blue in his peripherals and knows that Rex is standing with him, effortlessly firing his blasters and demolishing more and more droids. Safety is field triage after the battle, where Rex bandages Cody’s hands himself, and sends him back to Kenobi with a kiss on the forehead and a promise of after. Safety is walking through the ship, seeing his men alive, seeing Rex’s men alive. They’ve all failed too many, sent too many to their deaths to ever sleep well at night again, but they curl around each other and sleep, nightmares staved off by the other’s presence.

 

(Rex is asleep on his chest, snoring softly as Cody reads through mountains and mountains of paperwork in bed. It’s amazing to have Rex here, have him trust Cody enough to let down his guard and fall asleep. His Captain is a solitary man, stubborn and smart and strong and _wary_. 

Kamino was hard on them all, Cody reflects, but it was hardest on Rex. ‘Mutant’ clones were often decommissioned, so Rex stuck to the regs and kept his head down and made himself the best he could be just to stay alive. He was standoffish and harsh during ARC-Training, and it was only after Geonosis that he realised that he could feel again, could let his guard down. 

They’ve all come a long way since the first days of the war, have all seen such awful horrors. Sometimes the nightmares that paint their eyelids are past battles, no sign of _good soldiers_ , just their men lining up in perfect rows, walking to their doom. Sometimes it’s Malastare, sometimes Umbara. The shadows haunt all of them, but the command clones even more. They were in charge, and men were killed.)

 

Safety, Cody realises, when Rex is sitting up at the small desk in their rack with a mug of caf and a paintbrush, is love. It’s how he feels every time he looks at his riduur, his love. Safety is the slight brush of hands at a briefing, the kisses later on, the feeling on the battlefield that _someone_ fully and completely understands you and has your back. 

 

(Rex spends one night running his hands through Cody’s hair, crowing triumphantly at every grey hair he finds. Cody rolls over and pins Rex, accusing him of shaving his head to hide early balding, and Rex just smiles cheekily up at him and kisses him. 

They know they don’t have long left, they know that they’re slowly losing the war, that they’re aging at twice the normal rate. Grey hair and lined faces are a rarity among the ranks; only the oldest, most scarred clones have it. The Shinies are shinier than ever, barely eight years old and flash trained, with no idea of how to handle a real battle.)

 

So for now, until the alarms go off or the battles rage, they hold each other, safe from the galaxy outside.


End file.
